


The Ghost of Route 66

by spectacledotter



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Vignette, could be expanded on in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 12:35:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7439581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectacledotter/pseuds/spectacledotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Morrison and his motorbike meet a ghost on the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost of Route 66

Morrison left almost everything behind when he was buried in Arlington. Even his name is no longer his--the newscasts call him "Soldier: 76" thanks to his jacket, and he likes it that way. His gun is new, his jacket is new, even his sight is new, a deal with a devil he had thought long gone. The one thing he kept, after digging it out of the garage in Indiana, was his bike. It was a rusted old piece of shit, but it was the last thing he had of his father's, so he worked for years to repair and restore it.

Reyes used to roll his eyes. "I can't believe you're still riding that piece of crap," he said by way of greeting when Morrison parked in the Overwatch garage. Back when it was their home.

"Funny," Morrison said, pulling his helmet off to reveal a grin, "that's what Ana said to me about you."

"Cute. Seriously, though, we've got contractors lining up around the block, you could get one custom made. Kit it out with those heads-up displays you like, maybe add rockets… your pet monkey could ride in a side car."

"First of all, his name is Winston, and he's a gorilla," said Morrison, poking him in the chest, "and secondly, this bike was my dad's. He showed me how to fix it when I was a kid, whenever he was between deployments. Probably the only good memories I have of him. Something new just …wouldn't be the same."

He leaned back on the wall next to Reyes, who unfolded his arms to slide one around his shoulders. "Heard from your mom lately?"

"Yeah …she's okay. She's been going through all our old shit in storage. You know, backup drives, photo albums. Digitizing what she can." He shrugged. "Organizing things is kind of how my mom deals with stuff. When my grandmother died she did this huge wardrobe cleaning, I came back from college to find half my old shirts gone."

"Considering what I've seen of you in college, that's probably a good thing," Reyes teased, but his arm tightened around Morrison's shoulders. "So that's why you've been out riding that thing so much lately."

"Yeah. I guess so."

Reyes took Morrison's chin gently in hand and tilted his face so their eyes met. "You gotta tell me this stuff, man," he said gently, the skin around his eyes crinkling up with his smile. "It's not good to keep it all to yourself like that."

"It's my shit to deal with, Gabe."

"Your shit is my shit. Partners, remember?"

Morrison never got to protest. Reyes closed the space between them so fast it was like he barely moved at all.

"Tell you what," Reyes purred against his ear when he let Morrison come up for air, one hand holding his head still while the other grasped Morrison's ass and pulled his hips against his thigh, "let's put some new memories on that bike."

They were good, for a while. Now the memory of Reyes bending him over the bike is just another of the scars he'd left. A dull pain that hasn't gone away yet. Even so, he's out here riding a dusty stretch of empty highway across Arizona on the selfsame sport touring bike he always has. He's not as good at letting go of his past as he wants to be.

Smoke at the edge of his vision catches his attention, but when he looks, it stays on the edge of his vision. That can't be goo--

His front tire suddenly blows out, sending him flying over the handlebars and into the dirt at the side of the road. His gun flies from its holster at the side of the bike into the middle of the asphalt. As he tries to pick himself up, holding a couple of cracked ribs, the black smoke finally enters the centre of his vision and coalesces in between him and his bike into a human figure. Tall, hooded, with a mask that could be a skull, maybe. The figure holds a pair of shotguns. They're new, but the style is all too familiar.

"I can't believe you're still riding this piece of crap," says a voice out of his nightmares.

"Gabriel?" gasps Morrison. "I thought you were dead."

"It didn't take," says Reyes, levelling one of the shotguns at him.

Morrison rolls out of the way at the last moment; he can feel the heat from the slug as it whizzes into the ground. He runs for his rifle. dodging shotgun blasts by millimeters. Finally he grabs it, primes the missiles, dodges another blast, and fires right at the ghost in the mask. It can't be Reyes. There's no way.

The ghost is blasted back by the missiles, giving Morrison enough time to hit the special controls on his rifle, praying his contact's "upgrades" actually work this time. He hears the bike rev up and smells burning rubber on asphault, but he doesn't get a chance to check. His attention is wholly occupied by the smoke coalescing back into form. The mask fell off from the impact, and finally Morrison sees the face of his attacker.

He looks on in horror as flesh reknits over bone before his eyes, before burning off again into smoke. Even with eyes burning like embers, he knows that face. He knows it better than his own.

"Who the fuck are you?!" he yells anyway, his mind rebelling against the idea that the man he once loved could become such a monster, just as it did years ago.

Reyes sets his mask back in place. "That hurts my feelings, _partner,"_  he says mockingly. This time Morrison doesn't give him a chance to raise his guns before he starts firing, taking cover behind his own bike when Reyes shoots back. He notices the fresh tire re-inflating. Ziggurat can have good ideas after all.

"Gabriel is dead!" Morrison yells over the bike, popping up to fire another salvo of helix rockets. "I saw you die!"

Suddenly, the masked man is behind him, so fast he didn't seem to move at all. "Jack Morrison is dead, too," he says flatly.

Morrison spins and lashes out with his rifle at the same time, aiming to smash the butt into this damned ghost's face, but his gun passes right through the man's head. Reyes uses the momentum of dodging to aim a hard kick into the side of Morrison's head, and Morrison, too distracted by the bizarre horror before him, is knocked clean away and into the road--along with his visor. He can hear it hit the ground some distance from him.

But he can't see it, or anything else.

_Shit._

He scrambles across the road in the direction he heard his visor fall, hands outstretched with desperation. He can't hear Reyes at all, only the rush of wind past his ears and the feel of smoke on his face. If he can't find it soon, he's going to be easy prey--

A clawed hand grabs his own and presses the visor into it. Maybe Reyes still has a sense of fair play? Or maybe he's playing with him. But when Morrison reconnects the visor to his implants and his vision returns, Reyes is nowhere to be found.

He simply vanished into the wind.


End file.
